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Wishbone: Could we avoid sidetracking the discussion with obscure RPG references?

Fenixp: There's a discussion? And it's Warhammer 40k reference.

Yeah, there's not much discussion going on at this point, just someone who bought all the hype about Euclidean's engine, and who refuses to understand why other people don't, no matter how much we explain it. This thread couldn't really become any more pointless, and WH 40k references make everything better anyway.

THIS is the point I'm trying to get across.. Carmack says it CAN'T be done and Notch says EVERYONE is doing it.. so someone has to be wrong..in the second vid Bruce Dell SPECIFICALLY ADDRESSES this and basically says that Carmack and Notch, while perfectly competant at what THEY are doing, either don't know, misunderstand or refuse to see what HE is doing and are making all the wrong assumption.

EVERYONE seems to be taking Carmacks and Notch's word on this... and as far as I can see IN THIS PARTICULAR SITUATION, they are wrong.

TBH, if this IS true the the gpu manufacturers should be shitting themselves.. because the realtime demo was running on software rendering using the intel integrated chipset.. AND YOU SEE IT WORKING, presided over by a guy from [H]ardOCP.. You have to at least lend it some credence there.. it would have been torn apart in a detailed manner, as opposed to some flipant remarks by some people who should know better.

Watch the second vid.. see for yourself and listen to what he says

Carmack says that infinite resolution is impossible and did the math to show that it wasn't possible. The video doesn't show anywhere near what they were promising and to date have failed to provide anything to indicate that it isn't a scam.

Notch is, I believe, referring to voxel technology with that statement and it does show up all over the place, however, I'm not aware of anybody doing it on the scale that they're promising. Because it would require such obscene amounts of storage capacity and processing power that you'd never be able to do it. You'd be raytracing in real time well before you could pull that off.

As for the video, until they're doing it in public for people to interact with and with technology the rest of us have access to, I'd be wary of believing in it. They could beat the odds like onLive did, but onLive was in a better position to start with.

Or to put it another way, if it were possible, the industry would be making use of it by now. Voxels were well known even outside the industry by the late '90s, I remember them using it in one of the C&C games instead of requiring a 3D accelerator.

jefequeso: Why do people hate Notch so much? I always thought he seemed like quite a likable guy. Has he said stuff I'm not aware of, or is everyone just mad because he created Minecraft? :P

Honestly, I think in this case it's jealousy. Or, because of Minecraft.

hedwards: Or to put it another way, if it were possible, the industry would be making use of it by now. Voxels were well known even outside the industry by the late '90s, I remember them using it in one of the C&C games instead of requiring a 3D

other games also, doesn't Outcast use a Voxel engine?

Also, a quick question, I read somewhere that one of the main problem with Voxel engines is that it is very difficult to animate, which is why most Voxel games are very static - one of the reasons they have been so blocky and stylised - it hides the fact that nothing moves... Does this still hold true?

This article doesn't make any new claims or provide any new evidence beyond the baseless claims made in the other articles.

As I understand it, Unlimited Detail is nothing more than a voxel engine that uses nested voxels, a voxel grid that contains voxel grids within each voxel. While theoretically realisable, it is practically unfeasible due to the extreme memory and processing overheads involved. It can obviously be achieved in pre-rendered movies (which I suspect the videos released thus far to be), but these obviously take more time to render and cannot be rendered in real time.

amok: Also, a quick question, I read somewhere that one of the main problem with Voxel engines is that it is very difficult to animate, which is why most Voxel games are very static - one of the reasons they have been so blocky and stylised - it hides the fact that nothing moves... Does this still hold true?

It depends. The blockiness was basically a compromise to deal with the relatively low processing power available at the time. The voxel resolution was very low, which made the landscpes look very jaggy.

Nowadays, with the processing power we have today, we could create a landscape with much greater fidelity, but we still couldn't store a great amount of detail, let alone infinite detail. Zoom enough into these voxels, and the kinks will eventually reveal themselves.

jamyskis: Nowadays, with the processing power we have today, we could create a landscape with much greater fidelity, but we still couldn't store a great amount of detail, let alone infinite detail. Zoom enough into these voxels, and the kinks will eventually reveal themselves.

Yes, I can see that with games like Voxel Farm - but what about animating it? Is it something I dreamt up, do you know?